me. It
indicated the spirit of the man."

It is interesting to note that before the capture of Vicksburg the
protracted campaign had occasioned no little dissatisfaction with
General Grant; the President had been importuned to remove him, and had
much formidable opposition to encounter in his determination to stand by
him. Only a few days before the capitulation of the beleaguered city,
Senator Wade of Ohio--"Bluff Ben Wade," as he was termed--called upon
the President and urged Grant's dismissal; to which Lincoln
good-naturedly replied, "Senator, that reminds me of a story." "Yes,
yes," rejoined Wade petulantly, "that is the way it is with you, sir,
all _story--story_! You are the father of every military blunder that
has been made during the war. You are on your road to h--l, sir, with
this Government, and you are not a mile off this minute." Lincoln calmly
retorted, "Senator, that is just about the distance from here to the
Capitol, is it not?" The exasperated Wade grabbed his hat and rushed
angrily from the White House.

It is not pleasant to record that the cordial and generous
congratulations to Grant for his achievements at Vicksburg were in
marked contrast to the rather grudging recognition of Meade's much more
important and hard-won victory at Gettysburg. In the latter case the
despatches from Washington took the form not so much of acknowledgments
of what had been done as of complaints at what had not been done. It is
hard to believe that the President dictated, or even authorized, the
ill-timed and peevish despatch sent to General Meade[I] by the
inopportune Halleck, a few days after the battle of Gettysburg, in which
the victor on that desperate field is officially informed that "the
escape of Lee's army has created great dissatisfaction in the mind of
the President, and it will require an active and energetic pursuit to
remove the impression that it has not been sufficiently active before."
To this extraordinary message Meade at once made a simple and manly
rejoinder in which he said: "Having performed my duty conscientiously
and to the best of my ability, the censure of the President, as conveyed
in your despatch, is in my judgment so undeserved that I feel compelled
most respectfully to ask to be immediately relieved from the command of
this army." Halleck replied, rather ineptly, that his despatch had not
been intended as a censure, but as a "stimulus," and was not regarded as
a sufficient cause for Me